


The New Ways

by ailcia



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 00:44:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13042974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ailcia/pseuds/ailcia
Summary: Usually, Thursday liked a stakeout.





	The New Ways

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dkwilliams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dkwilliams/gifts).



It was a cold one, right enough. A sunny day was done, and the cloudless night provided next to no cover. They sat quiet in the Jag, watching the warehouse. The world outside as still and silent as the grave.

Usually, Thursday liked a stakeout. The strange edge the world took on, with the thrum of nerves and anticipation, the possibility of seeing something through and having done. How it all slowly settled as the hours drew on and thoughts turned inwards. Some of Fred’s best thinking had been done in situations such as these. 

He knew it was hangover from his army days, enjoying the easy camaraderie of it all. Trying to get the measure of the man alongside you. Jakes at been a good one for that, for all his flash talk in front of the others. In moments of calm, as much as in the thick of it, he’d revealed himself to be made of much better stuff than what he gave out. He thought and cared about the world more than he'd ever let on. Thursday wondered just where and how he was, knowing full well what being so far from home could do to a person… But, then again, he thought with a pang of guilt, turned out it had never been much of a home for him.

Strange was easy company, if a trifle trying. Thursday liked his new sergeant, appreciated him as a solid and reliable sort, open and honest, for the most. Not usually given to the kind of blustering Thursday had witnessed recently. But he was a little too chatty, a bit too keen to please… Not something that could ever be said of the sullen so-and-so he was currently stuck with.

He chanced a glance at Morse. The lad was stewing away, as per. Fingers worrying the underside of the steering wheel as he frowned at the darkness, left knee bouncing. Miles off and miserable with it. 

Thursday didn’t much care for the new, permanently-downward turn to Morse's mouth. His face was thinner and harder, too, meaner, almost. His light more guarded, eyes watchful and ringed with deepening shadows. Just as Fred’s chest ached, so too did his spirit, his sense that all was wrong since. Thursday knew the feeling like an old friend, knew too that a man had no choice but to roll with what life sent as best as he could manage. But Endeavour was not the rolling sort. The lad got stuck. 

Though something like peace had been brokered on the bench and in the pub, it still felt not quite right to be sat together like this after such a jarring absence. Fred had had to concentrate on knitting himself back together, but during the beats between the pain and the lost breaths, he’d missed Morse keenly. At the very first he hadn’t been able to get his head around why the lad wasn’t there by his bed, had assumed him dead. Few things could frighten Fred like that thought. For him to have come through and the lad not. It had taken Win a long time to convince him otherwise, explaining it to him every time he achieved consciousness with the forbearance of a saint. But the truth, seeming less at first, was almost (almost) worse. Fred was only just coming to understand the full magnitude of its effect on Morse, coming to realise that there might not be a way back to what they were. He kept catching himself on jagged edges that hadn’t been there before, to his mind.

That said, he wasn’t quite as sure of his mind as he might like, these days. Whether this was his age catching up with him or something else altogether, he didn’t know. And he didn’t much like to enquire, neither. 

Morse seemed restless. He’d always been a damned fidget, but just recently he always looked just a heartbeat away from fleeing the scene. After twenty-odd years on the job, it got so a man recognised that look. And Morse had it almost all the time now. Crawling out of his skin, he was, whenever he was in company. 

Once, Fred had taken comfort in watching Morse think. Almost a pleasure. He liked looking over, through the window or from the door, and seeing Morse's thin back bowed over, a freckled hand lost in wild coppery tangles. Upon reveal, his face showed every working of that big brain of his, while his fingers tapped a tattoo. He marvelled at how Morse’s eyes flicked from one invisible part of a plot to another, turning over every single detail of a case in his mind and angling a spotlight on it, setting out these bright facts against a landscape of accumulated knowledge and… There was no other word quite right for it, _culture_ , that more often than not revealed the secret means by which an intimate resentment was burnished up into a blood lust. Morse’s deft mind was able to secure threads between flyaway facts, and draw them together until they made a whole picture he delighted in sharing. Got himself tangled, all too often, but Fred knew it was the painstaking combination of talent and truth that gave him breath in the mornings.

Now, though, whenever Thursday thought to look at him, Morse was far away, off somewhere in his head, his eyes round and dreadful. Thoughts clearly still flying, but too fast, too far. He'd start if anyone spoke to him.

Trapped together in the frosty Jag, tipping into the third hour of it and long past the sandwiches, the young man squirmed in his seat for the umpteenth time.

“Ants in ‘em, is it?” It was getting on his wick, but he hadn’t meant it to come out quite like that.

Morse froze, but side-eyed him in umbridge. “Something like that,” came the somewhat arch reply.

Thursday frowned at his arsey tone. Missed again, then. Their conversations these days kept clattering like factory machinery gone out of time.

Feeling frustrated, Fred clenched his knuckles white round the pipe in his pocket. He knew the Strange situation had been getting Morse's back up, lately, but there was naught for. People got promoted. Thursday was resolved to not say another word on the subject, and to do right by his sergeant. There was no denying it was rough, and Morse had been clouted more than his fair share. A god-awful couple of years for anyone, let alone one so young, and Fred was desperately sorry for it. But rattiness wasn’t going to help anyone. And if Morse didn't settle to, Fred couldn't answer.

Morse cleared his throat, and Fred could practically feel him make a conscious effort to sit still. More, he suspected, to be contrary than out of any desire to respect Thursday’s noticeably shorter tether. Little git.

The silence swallowed them once more, tenser now in the enclosed space. Fred put his hands together and in between his thighs, hunkering down into his coat. Morse stayed resolutely upright, jaw set and mulish, the smoke streaming from his nose. An owl flew past the street light, obscuring the light for a flicker. Fred coughed, and Morse winced. It wore on.

After a time, Morse couldn't help but move again, unable to stifle a groan as he stretched out his right leg, his hand clenching the seat reflexively. Thursday looked at him sharply, at how he was leaning his weight against the door. He looked tight and tired. _Fool bloody boy._

Thursday growled, shaking himself as if coming to a decision. “I’m getting right sick of this. Morse, why don’t you have a walk up and see if there’s anything to see?” 

Morse looked round, his eyebrows going up. “Do you think that’s a good idea?” A genuine enquiry, for all it was bluntly put and sent a flash of irritation through Thursday.

“I do. Mind how you go, though.”

A short nod, and a crinkling of one eye. Suspected that was what passed for an apologetic smile, these days. Fred should count himself very lucky indeed.

He watched with not a little worry as Morse opened the door with a rush of cold air, and steadied one foot on the road below. He couldn’t help the grunt that came with the other leg, and held on to the door for a beat too long after. But he was up and out, and Fred continued to watch Morse like a hawk as he walked carefully over to the warehouse, delicately picking his way through the rubble, head down and hands in pockets as if he was braving the cold on a lonely walk back from the pub. He did the perimeter, disappearing into the gloom. By the time he rounded the brickwork again, Fred could tell just from looking that his gait that it had loosened. He let out the breath he hadn’t realised he’d kept. 

Morse was graceful enough getting back in, for all he did it arse first. Too good at not letting on, this one. Fred had to watch for it.

The breather had done him good. His cheeks were whipped pink with the wind, and his eyes were brighter. He rubbed his hands together, cupping them and blowing onto them with a shiver.

“Anything doing?”

“No. I thought I saw someone approaching from the back but it was just a stray, stayed to check. Nothing in any of the windows.”

“Good lad.” He chanced it, mildly. “And the other?”

A pause. “Just a little stiff,” Morse gave him a slightly long-suffering look, but it was a soft one. Then, would you have it, after a moment, “Thanks, sir.”

Thursday nodded, pleased as bleeding punch. 

Morse sat back, and crossed his arms, that apparently being that. Thursday couldn’t find another thing to say to him, but at least the air felt a bit clearer. Telling himself he felt satisfied, Fred let his thoughts drift.

Turns out they drifted rather too far. He woke up with a bit of a start, jolted his neck, and hacked violently. Pain exploded in his chest, knocking him for six. He clutched the handle of the door. When it subsided and he came to, Morse’s pale face shone across from him, sharp with anxiety.

Fred waved a hand, still breathless. “S’just the cold air. Be right as in a minute.”

Morse did not look at all convinced but, having been shouted at several times that week for being lippy, wisely bit his tongue. Seeming to feel some of the embarrassment rolling in waves off Fred and choosing to offer a rare olive branch, he nodded, “It is _freezing._ ”

Fred noticed then that the young man was trembling, and jabbed a finger at him, “Your trouble is there’s naught to you. Seen more meat on a butcher’s pencil, me. Here, take my coat.”

Morse looked appalled, holding his hands up to try and stop Thursday from shrugging out of it.

This just made him cross. “I won't let you be your usual glutton for punishment. My Win’s got me bundled up, good and proper.” At the continuing look of horror, he snapped, “Put it this way, Burridges is out of thermals for the season. Think I can spare me coat.”

“Well, I can't spare my inspector,” Morse shouted, taking them both by surprise.

The bottom dropped out of Fred's stomach, and he nearly gagged. “Alright, cheerless. No need for that.”

They stared at each other, measure to measure, just as they’d done in the shack by the lake. When he wasn’t avoiding it, Morse looked you right in the eye, searching for the truth of you. The strength of his gaze knocked Thursday away sometimes, and sometimes it was a struggle to bear it. But as he held it now, he found he understood. Just a little, just enough. 

Fred nodded and looked away, swallowing his chagrin as much as he was able. “How long was I out?”

Morse shrugged, also self-conscious. “An hour or two. No change.” He let out a emptying sigh, diminishing.

Fred nodded again. “Right, then. You get your head down. Fair’s fair.”

Morse looked like he was about to argue, spoiling as he was. But then he swallowed, nodded, and without another word turned away from Thursday to scrunch up against the window. He seemed grateful for the escape. Thursday dug down into the bag in the footwell, rooting about for the flask of coffee Win had packed them. Lukewarm by now, most like, but better than nothing. He couldn’t risk dropping off again, and his throat was sore. Eventually victorious, he straightened, but before he unscrewed the top he glanced over. Hidden behind the hunched shoulder, he saw that the lad’s face had smoothed out a bit, the bone-deep exhaustion that constituted their working life these days carrying him away quicker than either of them expected. Watching as his breathing slowed, Thursday felt himself relax. A powerful tenderness welled up within him, as it always did when Endeavour was out of commission.

Once he was sure that he was well and truly off, Thursday carefully slipped out of his coat, and laid it over him. Just as he'd done two lifetimes ago. And the stupid sod curled into the warmth, despite himself. 

 

\----  
With thanks to glim for writing the wonderful 'Summer's End' that partly inspired this fic.


End file.
